On the field

Yesterday Nick Nack and I took Natalie -- along with her team -- to a cross-country competition an hour or so away.  I thought it would be good for her to be in an actual athletic competition, something she has avoided for her 10 odd years on the planet.  And it was good for her, as we shall see.

But first we had to deal with me.  When we got there, there was blaring music, there was blazing sun, there were tents for shade and really skinny cross-country looking kids jogging around getting ready, checking out the course.  And the kids were nervous, and I was like "oh man, my daughter's getting involved in a real competition here."  And she is not morphologically optimized for x-country, no lithe gazelle she.  Nor has she trained a ton (which I think is appropriate for a 10-year old).  But the prospect of her competing in the blazing sun got me stirred up, and I just wanted to keep her in the shade, hydrated.

So her coaches got her out on the course, running around, checking it out, and when I saw her and Isabel way out in front of the other kids I was like "slow down, girls!"  And then the race before hers all the kids, including Natalie, were running around cheering for their teammates, and I was afraid she was going to tire herself out.  And they took forever to get her race started, and I can't nudging her and Isabel over into the shade. And then at the starting line Nick Nack was leading the kids in "strides", sprinting out 50 yards before the race, and I ran over saying "what the hell is he doing?"

At this point in time, another of the coaches, one who had run on the Olympic 10k team in her prime (not all that far past) turned to me and said "Are you always critical of everything?  He's doing strides.  Why don't you just chill out, man?" And there were a few more sentences which I have forgotten or repressed, and I realized that I must have looked entirely like "one of those parents."  So I slunk away.

And then during the race I ran around the course and cheered.  Only I didn't really feel comfortable just cheering for Natalie or our kids, but I was totally feeling it for the really plump kids who were bringing up the rear, and I stuck around and hooted and hollered for them, and I realized that it was all about how shitty I felt on most athletic fields of endeavor back then, not because I was fat, but because I was scrawny and uncoordinated and was never top tier at anything, till I was 13 or so and started to break out on the track and the field as well.

And Natalie had a great attitude all day.  She ran almost a personal best in that nasty heat, though she wasn't toward the front of the pack, and she cheered for her team and when I encouraged her she stayed with me and cheered for fat kids we will probably never see again.  And in the evening, when she was talking to grandma and Rob on the phone with Mary, she kept saying "we've got to tell them about my race."  And then when the subject of it came around she said "Oh, it was just a race."

What to say

Sat at my desk today.  Worked.

Went to lunch with the guy I sublet my office to.  He told me some things that may be useful in the business world and could make me a more effective professional, but are not interesting, and are reflective of a wierd functionalist reductiveness that is part and parcel of dealing in the for-profit world.  Am I really excited by this?  No.

On the other hand, we sat with Graham's therapist this morning and had a great conversation. The guy is very interested in learning about our little boy and also our family dynamics which impact his development.  At the end of it Mary was a little upset with me because she had not had time to hit on all the points she would have liked to because we ended up talking about my relationship to my dad, Graham's granddad, for a while.

As you can tell, these were two very different conversations.

Here's a picture of Graham from his trip to Williamsburg with grannie.  There are others he would probably prefer be shown, including many ones with him astride this or that cannon, but this one I like particularly.

2 days in Paris

Directed by Julie Delphy (her directorial debut), this one had gathered dust by our DVD player for some months.  But then, uncharacteristically for us, we watched the whole thing start to finish in one setting. 

Delphy and boyfriend Adam Goldberg (he of The Hebrew Hammer fame, he was a bad-ass stoner at Columbia when I was there in grad school) are "lovers" from New York who come by her place in Paris on their way back from a "vacation" in Venice. Hilarious hijinks ensue. It seems so improbable that Woody Allen didn't have a hand in this movie, though Goldberg channels him as a character and Delphy's concept and execution owes a lot to the old pervert genius.  Only it's funnier than Allen's stuff has been for the last decade.

Rent it.

Obama's Failure

I was at a party yesterday talking to a couple of older Chapel Hill women wearing batik and other old school fabrics, and talk turned to politics.  To rile them up, I said outright that "Obama has failed."  It worked, and they pointed out that Obama had pushed through major legislation, including health care, stimulus, and financial reform, despite the fact that the Republicans were being the party of no really effectively.

This is all true, and these would be momentous accomplishments indeed for any legislator.  But Obama is not one anymore, he is an executive.  His job is not to get laws passed, but to manage the country to a better place, to execute and get things done.  The government cannot itself create enough jobs. He needs to bring his stakeholders along to where he wants them to go, and he has not done that.  He has been outfoxed by Karl Rove, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and a bunch of other jackass freaks.  The business world has put on a very effective capital strike, holding lots of cash on their balance sheets and not hiring people because they are so scared. 

Obama hasn't convinced enough Americans that he's doing the right thing.  We may hope that the health care reform will end up being transformative enough to justify the tremendous sacrifice that has been made for it.

The word of God

I was showing Natalie a painting of St Jerome in the cathedral in Montreal the other day and explaining to her how the Catholics needed to invent a myth of him being visited by the spirit, the Virgin Mary, etc., while translating the Bible into Latin, in order to say that the Latin Bible was literrally the word of God.  Then it occurred to me that fundamentalist Christians have the same issue.  So how do they handle the translation issue, one wonders?

Tanger Outlet Mall in Mebane

I met a guy recently who's working on the work site for the Tanger Outlet Mall in Mebane.  It's a big deal this, an $8.5 million land sale for Mebane for a 317,000 square foot outlet mall.  Hold me back.

But even if it is for useless retail selling Americans crap they don't need, it will mean jobs, albeit shitty ones.  But not construction jobs. Apparently there are anglophone site managers on the job, but some 300 largely paperless hispanic guys doing the work.  Now, I am not anti-immigrant by a long stretch. I think what's going on in Arizona is a blight on our national conscience.  However, if you've got work on commercial construction that's supposed to be done by licensed contractors being done by illegal immigrants, that's questionable. There should be some law enforcement agency tasked with managing this and staffed adequately to do its job properly.  Incidentally, I don't think we should deport the working guys. That's just a waste of time. The general contractors, developers, etc. should be fined or otherwise dinged.

If doing the job legally made it uneconomical to do the job at all, then perhaps we don't need more outlet malls. Isn't that what all the outlets in Burlington are for?  Is the vacancy rate there really so low that we need so many more outlets?  I tend to doubt it.

Probably the only way this thing gets done is if the whole thing is basically done illegally.  So there are more $7.50 an hour low-skilled jobs for English speakers of all races and creeds to hawk Chinese-made garbage to one another.

Natalie and Clark take Quebec -- High- and low-lights

First, a warning to visitors to Montreal.  The Biodome and the Insectarium, both on the grounds of the 1976 Olympics, are supposed to be awesome.  Penguins, porcupines, and all kinds of roaches.  What's not to like?  Unfortunately, after driving out there, we discovered that they were closed, and had been since June 16, because of a "labor action", i.e. a strike.  What a bummer. Unfortunately, even in times of unprecedented economic woe and stress on public finance, Francophone public sector workers are still keen on getting what they perceive to be rightly theirs.

Our greatest highlight was, quoth Natalie, the visit to Montmorency Falls Northeast of Quebec, which are some 30 meters higher than Niagara Falls, we'll have you know.  The ride up and back in the cable car was a big winner.  On the way down, we had the car all to ourselves! There is apparently a beautiful road along the hillside from the falls out towards the Catholic cathedral at St-Anne-de-Beaupre. Unfortunately it was a impassable when we were there due to construction.  We went on a "detour" that took us on some winding residential streets out to where the road ends.  Literally, it backed up to forest and, judging by my inspection of Google maps the night before, there was nothing back there except for trees, lakes, and critters.  I was very curious to see it.

Natalie, on the other hand, was not interested in bucolic country driving. After checking out the cathedral, which wasn't entirely her cup of tea, she said she wanted to head back into town. And who can blame her, Quebec is an awesome little burg.  But, after lunch, first we stopped into the Musee des Beaux Arts de Quebec.  It was a cool looking building.  Unfortunately, they were dunning us for $15 for adults and $7 for kids.  That's more than the frickin Met in NYC suggests you contribute, if memory serves correctly.  Our guidebook told us of a fascinating part of the core collection explaining the conflict between academicians and the avant-garde in Quebec from 1860 to 1945. I can tell Natalie how that looks myself in about 5 minutes. There's no need for us to subsidize Quebecois exercises in generalized finishing school.  Natalie was as outraged (if not more so) than I was. So instead we walked around in the park outside and saw some silly
statues and some excellent historical plaques, including one from the decisive 1759 battle between the French and the English, in which one side "cleverly outflanked" the other. We were certain that Graham would love this.

One thing we can say of Quebec in the fall is that, though the leaves are purty, it's getting chilly.  Our hotel was one of the tallest in the whole town, and when you stepped outside, wind often whipped ferociously round the corner.  It actually blew my prized Camp Gwynn Valley baseball cap off my head! But a friendly cabbie retrieved it from under his car and said "Bienvenue a Quebec!" There was also a fair amount of rain. On our first night in Montreal, Natalie and I went out for an utterly non-notable walk through generally boring parts of town, getting pretty drenched in the process. In Quebec, we also got wet. Ah well, the place is lovely, and the Hotel Frontenac is pretty enchanting.  I think Natalie will remember our trip for some time, and I know I will.

The beginning of the end of the world

Driving north today on Route 40 from Montreal to Quebec City, it was rather empty.  To the west of the highway, we could see farmhouses and small villages in the distance.  I was saying to Natalie that in Canada not too far from where we are the paved roads might end, perhaps even 15-20 miles from where we were.  Looking at Google maps in the hotel later, I discovered just how right I was.

It's astonishing.  Unless I'm reading these maps wrong, things really thin out to the northwest of this road.  Man I wish we had time to just nose around the outback up here.

And then you get to Quebec City.  This little piece of pseudo-Europe at the frickin end of the earth. Wall to wall cute and tourist shops.  There's a falafel place a few blocks away from a seminary straight out of some Bergman movie with a courtyard where kids have been playing for 300 years.

This despite the fact that it's not much further north than Paris, or even Seattle.

As we drove, we played some very quick games of "I Spy", which goes "I spy with my little eye something that is (name the color)."  It went quickly because there was nothing, literally nothing, but green, yellow, and red trees, green grass, grey sky, grey road.

Oh yeah

So Natalie and I got stopped at passport control coming into Canada.  I had gotten her a passport, and thought I was doing pretty well.  And I had the declaration.  But no, they wanted to see a passport photo.  And an itinerary, to prove that we intended to leave the country.

Most of all, they thought it was suspicious that I was travelling alone with Natalie.  "Where's your mom?  Why didn't she come with you?  Do you have a signed (preferably notarized) letter from her stating that it's OK for her to be traveling with you alone? etc. etc."

Apparently, lots of people abscond with their children.  The guy downstairs at customs actually called Mary on the phone and asked what Natalie was wearing.

On the one hand, I think it's nice that Canada is taking an interest in childrens' well-being.  On the other hand, it's a little obsessive. If I didn't have proper documentation and attestation that we were on vacation, what recourse would Canada as a state have?  Who supergovernmental authority confers on Canada the power to judge how I take vacations?

Natalie and Clark take Quebec: v1, Montreal

Our plane was a little late leaving Phillie for Montreal, so by the time we got to our hotel downtown it was 5 pm and we were starving.  Natalie declared that we needed, first and foremost, to sample a poutine, that delectable assemblage of french fries, cheese curds, and brown gravy that all the kids have been talking about.  The guys at the desk at our hotel were of one mind on where to go, La Banquise on Rue Rachel, which was not anywhere near the Old Town but was in a pretty cool neighborhood where people actually live, sporting a number of other homey looking boites. La Banquise proved to be a favorite of the tattooed, sideburned, and pierced crowd, but there was nothing wrong with the fabled dish itself.  Which is not to say that I feel I need another one soon.

Right now we're back at the hotel, cooling our heels for a few minutes before heading out to eyeball the old town and port and some kind of a nightcap. We are also sampling some fine television:  Dogs vs. Cats on Animal Planet.  So far it's 2 to 2, with our favored felines having taken the Petathlon and the cleanliness competition.

More updates to come.

Our house got broken into

And they stole Mary's MacBook.  That's the third time we've been ripped off in the last 3 years.  Once in Princeton, once someone stole the Garmin out of our car in Carrboro, left unlocked by a garage that will not be mentioned by name because they so honorably ponied up for a replacement, and now this.

Apparently the "pre-disastered" theory espoused by Robin Williams as Garp in "The World According to Garp" does not quite work out in real life.

Highlights Magazine

Can kiss my ass.

My mom bought a subscription to Highlights for my kids.  They kinda like it, though Graham finds it a little light on the revolutionary and other old fashioned war content.  So the magazine sends subscription renewal reminders to both the subscriber (my mom) and the recipient (us), so that we both pony up or need to coordinate.  Maybe this is common practice amongst magazines, but it's a shitty one nonetheless.

Joe Strummer: the Future is Unwritten

This is a very good documentary, for many reasons.  I had no idea that Strummer and Mick Jones had played together again. I actually cried when I saw that.

Jeremy Lin

You gotta like this kid.  He is gonna sell some sneakers.


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Chapel Hill Transit

Partially because the town is not as cool as once it was, there's no cooler thing about Chapel Hill these days than the free buses.  When my car was broke last week, I had to ride the F bus from downtown Carrboro to down by Whole Foods, and it was very convenient, despite stopping at the Mall for 7 minutes, despite the fact that the AC wasn't on in the morning when it should have been.

The actual buses are suspiciously similar to the ones they had when I was in junior high, back when you had to pay money, but that's beside the point.  They are not only free, they have free bike racks.

However, one gets the feeling that there is piss poor route and fleet optimization. Morning buses headed into town are full, which is awesome, and evening rush seems to have good ridership as well. But I run in the evenings around Eastwood Lake, and I see the G bus come down N. Lake Shore.  It is almost always completely empty. Once I saw one rider.  Buses use a lot o. gas per mile. I get 55 cents per mile as an expense for driving my car, when I drive on biz.  I'm sure that's a Federal rate. I don't know what the comparable figure for buses is, but it's much higher. To say nothing of the emissions issues.

There should be a way for buses to run less empty. Use vans.  Give people who use lightly traveled routes off hours vouchers to call cabs.

There are hardware limitations around vans, and possibilities for abuse of a taxi scheme, sure, but I'd like to know if these issues are being studied.  Does the system track rider volume at all?

So much time, so little of it to blog

Had a tree guy come by the house yesterday to talk about taking down branches to open up our view of the lake. He also looked at a poplar out front, and pronounced it dangerous to the house.  His arguments seemed sound, and Mary's been wanting to get rid of some trees anyway to get more light on the house.  It's coming down.

Most impressive indeed* was the guy's get up. Long hair and beard. Civil War type leather hat.  Boots that laced up almost to his knee, with a knife sheathed in there for good measure.  Old school Chapel Hill, though he hailed originally from Western Massachussetts.

He liked to tell stories about jobs, in fact, it was difficult to stop him from doing so once he got wound up. He told us one about having to make it so water could flow through a pipe ("We had to get on that job while it was still dry, and the water level was so low cuz of the drought, you see") which turned out to have a big rock cropping up in it about  30 feet in ("there was no way anybody could climb up in there, so I figured the only way to take it out was to use a high-powered rifle.... So I put on a welding mask, just in case there was any blowback from in there, but I didn't pull down that really dark piece of glass, you know, just the inner glass piece so that I could see... with five shots we took about 12-14 inches off a that piece of rock, you know"). In any case, in due time, we got organized to have him come do some work.

 *Speaking of "indeed", Graham has taken to larding the word "indeed" into his discourse.  So we might ask him "Graham, would you like some soy milk?" And he might respond, "indeed."  Or he might say something like, "you know, when Benedict Arnold was talking to the Green Mountain boys about going up to Ticonderoga, they agreed, because, indeed, there was a lot of artillery up there to steal."  As you might have guessed, he has kept up his taste for the Revolutionary War.

He has, however, diversified slightly.  Last week, for writing homework, they had to write a sentence saying what they liked.  Examples on the piece of paper included "Jake likes bugs" and "Nina likes her puppy."  Graham wrote "Graham likes WWII."  There's nothing like a nice contraction to make writing assignments easier.

Moron koran-burning

A few more thoughts.

• Although Obama takes the right position in decrying the burning, he shouldn't have dipped down into this discussion.  He has taken the bait. Now loonies of all stripes will want to get his goat.  There are plenty of federal employees who can comment.
• Appropriate local responses might be to burn bibles, flags, constitutions right across the street
• The US press might decide en masse not to film live footage of the event.  If Al Jazeera (not a bad news organization) and other Islamic press outlets are the only ones with cameras, Jones et al might think differently about what they're doing.
• Although the First Amendment constrains the government from abridging freedom of speech, there's no reason the populace can't act as an obstacle to press access.  Why don't a bunch of citizens create a cordon of intentional traffic accidents around the burning site so that press trucks can't get through?  It would be ironic indeed if Cash for Clunkers made it difficult to find good cars to sacrifice.  Or just a good old-fashioned sit in?

Burning the Koran

Heard about this during morning drive time then quickly forgot.  What idiocy.  Burn the Koran to demonstrate hatred of Islamic radicalism.

People will die. Lots of Bibles will burn too.  I can't think of a good reason not to burn a few myself, save for the wasted BTUs.  Come winter, it may be time.

Lets go Tar Heels

The graphic below is taken from www.data.gov the US Federal government's flagship for open data.  The darker states have higher ratios of library books per capita.  North Carolina looks suspiciously low.  Fewer than Tennessee?  Then again, so does Massachusetts, which makes me question the data quality.  That's too much of an outlier.  Still, pretty cool stuff.

Parking lot

Went out to the REI near the South Point Mall today around mid-day.  Trying to put a kayak on the roof of the Outback (I know that sounds like a cliche, but it's true), while pushy women in white Range Rovers waited for the spot next to us.  Reminded me of what I hate most about suburbia.

On the other hand, the fact that there was no space in the lot indicates to me that the substantial portion of the populace that is employed was out spending this Labor Day.

Up the Yangtze

I usually don't want to watch documentaries on weekends, but this one was absolutely worthwhile.  The trailer overstates its hamhandedness.  Yes it thematizes the displacement caused by the Three Gorges dam product.  Yes it graphically juxtaposes silly American tourists with not-quite-yet-so-fortunate Chinese.  But it is really about characters, a young peasant girl and her family as well as another guy, less poor, who work on this boat.  And how they fit into a moment in Chinese history.  Well-done and nuanced.  Watch it.

The Entrepreneurial University, my white ass

UNC has a new chancellor, one Holden Thorp, the winsome lad with the John Edwards hair depicted below.  Apparently, Mr. Thorp, a scientist, has a bee in his bonnet about universities being entrepreneurial.  He even wrote a book about it with some guy named Buck.

In Thorp's view, all classes should have "impact."  That means that they should be "relevant."  To effect this, professors teaching courses about things that happened in the past should as a matter of course analogize to the present, so that kids can see how they have "impact."

I can assure you that, as someone in the private sector who is searching for suitable job candidates, what I'm looking for is ones who can recite for me ways in which their professors told them that things from the past were similar to contemporary life. I certainly am not looking for people who have honed critical faculties, who are creative, or who are able to think for themselves. May sweet little baby Jesus save us from neo-functionalist morons like this.

Something in the Tea

In the NY Times this Sunday, one David Tulanian of LA writes:

I, for one, certainly don’t want anyone — especially the government — telling me what I will eat. As an adult, I should be able to determine my own dietary needs, thank you very much.

Three months ago, a visit to the doctor revealed that at 5-foot-8 and 225 pounds, I had become “obese.” Also, my blood pressure was high, as was my sugar level. In response, I cut my food portions in half, skipped desserts and took brisk 30-minute walks.

Today, both blood pressure and sugar levels have dropped considerably, and I am 30 pounds lighter. Another 30 to go and I’m home free.

I wish I too had such a brilliant doctor.  One who -- all by his lonesome -- would define standards for obesity and conduct research on the correlations between blood pressure, blood sugar levels etc. to let him/her give me good advice on health. Where does this guy think his doctor learned what to advise him?

Public health is one of the best and most important things the government does, and at $31 billion, the NIH is a steal. Long-term, obesity is a bigger threat than the debt, comparable to global warming. If anybody from the Northeast remembers the anthrax scare in the fall of 2001, those people from the NIH were fucking heros, and what Michele Obama and Jamie Oliver are doing now is hugely important. One hopes they can be successful.

This Tulanian guy obviously has great willpower and discipline, and if he can keep his weight off, and remain healthy, he's a true exemplar, but an exception. Keeping off weight is hugely difficult, that's why weight loss is an enormous industry.  One wonders if he's been slipping a little something in his tea over there at the Tea Party.

Just when you think

Your daughter is growing up with her pierced ears, she goes off to the mall and comes back with a ten-pack of plastic earrings in the shape of African animals: lions, monkeys, giraffes, etc. Gotta love it.

Map of the World

Mary's college boyfriend Khalid had a band called Map of the World, based out of Ann Arbor (naturally), together with his sister, whose voice is reminiscent of Natalie Merchant. They sound pretty good.

So when Mary told me she had gotten a "map of the world" shower curtain, I was initially surprised, thinking she had been back in touch with Khalid.  Not that there would be anything wrong with that. We hear of occasional contact with Khalid from Kate or Valery or others who are back in Ann Arbor. And Mary -- to her infinite credit -- doesn't get jealous when I have lunch with or talk to my ex-girfriends, which is something I like to do.  I mean, I stay in touch with my other friends, right?

And if she had gotten a free shower curtain, hey, that's cool too.  Of course, it turns out that it was just a shower curtain with a map of the world on it.  Which is awesome.

Kudzu

When we were young there was a lot of concern with kudzu.  We saw a documentary in Jim Charles's class about how noxious it was.  REM put it on the cover of Murmur back in '83 as a metaphor for the degradation (in all senses of the word) of southern culture.

Wikipedia emphasizes that it is still a menace "Kudzu is a serious invasive plant in the United States. It has been spreading in the southern U.S. at the rate of 150,000 acres (61,000 ha) annually," blah blah blah.

However, coming back to the south after roughly a quarter century either in the Northeast or otherwise preoccupied, kudzu seems less rampant.  Maybe it's because the Triangle has burgeoned and kudzu has been pushed back right here, or maybe it's because kudzu seemed like such an apt metaphor for how we felt about a lot of things coming out of stagflation, Vietnam, Iran, and other traumas of 1973-82.  Or maybe it's just me.  Thoughts?

New books and shelves

Hauled these very heavy but not all that beautiful shelves from my mom's husband's office last week. They were empty and crying out for books, so I am bringing in books one box at a time, emptying shelves at home in prep for renovation. Then I bought two more at the thrift store today, including H.L. Mencken's classic which nobody reads The American Language.  OK, so the guy was an anti-semite. He still did some good work.

In any case, it feels good to see more boox in here.

Starbucks -- safe for white people

Is it not curious that it is socially acceptable for middle-class white people to work at Starbucks and its competitors, but at no other fast food places? This was rather clear yesterday morning at RDU at around 7am. Starbucks was run like a tight ship, a bunch of attentive young white people processing order efficiently, expeditiously, and courteously.

Iced joe in hand, I went to the breakfast place down the way to get a biscuit. There, a couple of hispanic people and a black guy were minding the store, doing a perfectly fine job. In front of me, however, was the prototypical angry white man (AWM), fresh off the back 9. He ordered scrambled eggs with country ham, no biscuit or other carb. I got it, a recidivist Atkins diet guy. However, the hispanic guy wasn't quite following him for a second. So AWM snapped at him. Having once lashed out, he moved down to the beverage area, where he asked the black guy for an iced tea. It looked like a 20 or 24 oz cup to me, which in my estimate is pretty big. AWM, though, commented that "I wanted a large iced tea," but when he got no response he acquiesced and paid the bill.

So what is it, then, about Starbucks? Do they pay better and have better benefits?(I think there's a measure of truth to that) Does the fact that it's a premium product with Euro-sizing (tall-grande-vente, if I have at long last mastered it) confer prestige on the task of serving it? Would AWMs heap scorn on servers of color if given the opportunity? Is it the absence of grease that makes the labor more seemly? It's a mystery to me, I must confess.

The world's shyest bass player?

Lyrics (not my translation)

Girls : Why does he act as if he's not interested? x 3

Even if you ask, I can't say anything.

Please don't ask why I put my head down.

I don't know, and there's nothing I can do.

The well inside my heart has dried long time ago.

*Don't think me as a sweet guy. I'm just a normal guy without any taste.

Girls : x3 Repeat

If you ask me again, I do have something to say. My heart used to burn in love. I don't know why not these days. Even a small lit scares me now.

* - repeat

Girls - Repeat

What I did for lunch today

Went out and got a burrito.  Saw Crabill and Jane Stein.

Then I watched this, and I hunted down and bookmarked a couple of the things he's talking about.  Good stuff.

Afeared of the gnats

So I walked down the hill at dusk and went for a swim in the lake.  At one point in time, a heron flew over my head. Later, I saw the moon through the trees, so I swam further out into the lake to have a look at it.

This was much better than being swarmed by rabid gnats.

Swarmed by gnats

The other night, I went running.  At 8:30 pm, it was 88 degrees out. Because the family was still up north, I decided to go 5 miles or so. Running along North Lake Shore, I heard a strange buzzing sound, which presaged an attack by a swarm of small insects.  My first thought was gnats, though, in the air, they seemed white. When they landed in the sweat on my chest, however, they were dark. I definitely couldn't breathe through my mouth, so I used the nose. To get away from them, I had to accelerate to a near sprint, which wasn't so bad, as I'm training for an 800 meters showdown with Drake in October, but it wasn't really what I wanted to do at that hour in that heat, but then they caught up with me, or perhaps another swarm found me, so I had to speed up again.  After 3 reps, when I headed up the hill, I seemed to have shaken them.

All told, it was straight out of Hitchcock's The Birds, save that I'm not as pretty as Tippi Hedren, nor do I have her diction.

From Springsteen to Joy Division

On the Arcade Fire's first album, I thought they owed a lot to the Pixies.  On the second, Win Butler often felt like he was channeling the Boss.  This time around Joy Division seems like the key influence.  All good.

Vongole

When Mary and I quit Manhattan in '98, we moved to Somerville, NJ, a town with deep roots in what I came to consider New Jersey's legacy ethnicities:  Italian and Jewish-Americans.  These were the people that gave the Garden State good food before the onslaught of the Indians, Chinese, Brazilians, and others that lomade it an even better place to eat.

On main street in Somerville there is a place called Alfonso's, a family-oriented pizzeria and trattoria.  On the wall in the front of Alfonso's is a picture of a couple of plump Italian guys mustaches, sitting in their undershirts in bright sunshine, next to some water.  They are eating what is clearly linguine with clam sauce, and they are eating it out of a metal tray, like what you might use to make brownies.

Although I have never lived like that, I think of that as the essence of summertime.

Tonight, with Mary and the kids away, I made a nice linguine alle vongole, way garlicky, though with canned clams.  The cats went nuts.  I didn't give them any.

Low on ideas

Being away from my kids, and no longer commuting, it becomes tougher and tougher to generate ideas for blogs, as the sources of randomness are largely removed from my existence, being replaced by grinding routine.

At JFK's shiny Jet Blue terminal last week, I sat and watched people walk by, looking for something bloggable.  There was very little, aside from a four-year old boy lagging behind his parents while wheeling a small suitcase in the shape of a hound dog's head, complete with droopy ears.  But we can file that right under missing my kids.

I did note that Jet Blue and Dunkin Donuts have apparently executed a strategic alliance of some sort.  In the terminal and on the plane, there wasn't a dram of Starbucks to be had.

Here at home, I've begun another Alan Furst novel, Red Gold, and must say that it's starting out even better than the first one I read (Dark Star ??).

Also, the guy who looks like Jeff Daniels from Dumb and Dumber at the deli at the supermarket has stooped to new lows of sadistic languor. It's as if he's performed a reverse time-motion study (time-stasis?) of the sandwich-making process, and has sought out and attained new ways of making a sub even more slowly.  I have to give it to the guy for thoroughness.

Back home

Having ditched my family in New York, I'm back in Chapel Hill this evening, enjoying an exciting evening of TV. First, the Premier League season preview show on FSC.  And then, during commercial channel-flicking time, I espied John Huston's classic Victory, perhaps the greatest soccer movie of all time, with Pele and Bobby Moore and Sylvester Stallone wandering around Paris drinking shots of cognac, speaking horrific French, and lounging shirtless in a solitary confinement cell.  When Pele scores the equalizer on a bicycle kick, and then Stallone saves a penalty at the end despite knowing nothing about goalkeeping....  ah yes, that's good TV.

Lifetime achievement award for the Tappett Brothers

I'd like to go on record plumping for Click and Clack, the Tappett brothers, of "Car Talk" fame.  More even than John Stewart, they are probably the most talented entertainers of their generation, and they impart useful information too.  Here's proof:  Natalie, at the tender age of 10, knows nothing about cars, and doesn't want to.  But when the Tappetts are on, she joins Mary and me in shooshing everybody else in the car (AKA Graham) so she can hear them.

There is a growing trend towards "laughology," a belief that laughing is just flat out good for you. There are some guys in India who go out on the beach and just laugh for the sake of laughing.  I'm not going that far.  But the Tappett brothers are both funny and have incredibly infectious laughs. They have it "going on," as the young people say.

And the credits at the end ("our Russian chauffeur is Pickup Andropov") are an incredible exercise in sustained creativity, funny every week, just like the scene at the end of the opening sequence of the Simpsons where the family gathers around the couch. As of May, 2010, Groening and crew had done 464 versions of that, and they're all pretty funny.

Despicable Me

This is a harmless little formula-driven romp for Steve Carell and somebody at one of the factories that makes cartoons.  I laughed, I enjoyed myself, the air-conditioning was working just fine on a hot summer day.  Natalie liked it too. IMAX didn't add to anything but the cost, however.

Afterwards, I took Natalie to explore the charms of New Roc City, including the mighty amusement arcade and the glo in the dark indoor putt putt course.  The latter holds no charms for my high brow girl, however.  I, however, am intrigued...

40,000th hit

Today the blog celebrated it's hard-earned 40,000th hit (excluding RSS feeds, of course).  The lucky surfer hailed from.... Kathmandu, Nepal.  I kid you not.  He had googled the phrase "LG sucks", and found my ruminations on that topic.

P531, the 6:30 to from Boston to Framingham

Some things feel familiar, some things dramatically different.  The train car is the same as the older stock in the New Jersey Transit fleet.  On the absolute up side, there is wi-fi service.  What is odd is the ethnic component.  There are a couple of Asian people, but other than that, it's as white as can be.  Rather strange.

I'd like to check in with Mary on the phone, but am afraid I would be sternly rebuked by barrage of arched eyebrows.  Will wait.

Had to Cry Today

Blind Faith is so good, I'm going to have to extend my classic rock spelunking to Cream, Yardbirds, Traffic.

Random notes

• After ragging on Larchmont a couple of days ago (actually, it wasn't so much about the town as it was about how the town reflects the general distribution of wealth in our fair land), I got an email from my friend Cricket saying I should turn my attention to Scarsdale or Greenwich, since she and Tioma and their kids now live in Larchmont.  Cricket, apparently, has not been following the Grouse long enough to have kept up with how I have heaped abuse on those towns, most particularly on how it's impossible to get Gatorade in Greenwich.
  
• Graham, once more having gotten sick at Grandma's house, was not able to go into the city today.  We had planned to hit the Statue of Liberty, but that was downgraded to a trip to the Met (museum, not opera). He has thrown a tantrum and gone on hunger strike, refusing to be assuaged by the promise of either Liberty's Kids or a trip to the Thomas Paine Cottage in New Rochelle. Tomorrow they are supposed to go see The Lion King on Broadway, but missing that has little leverage over Graham, as he knows full good and well that there is no revolutionary war angle to it.
  
• It's a beautiful day on the East Coast, finally.  I will get out for a run and/or swim in due time, but first must give Graham one more chance to wise up.

Stieg Larrson

As I mentioned a few days back, I was reading Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I finished it.

In the middle of it, I was excited about it.  By the time I got to the end, less so.

Yes, he is readable.  Yes, the mystery is good and compelling.  But in the end he's too focused on S&M, bondage, rape, pedophilia, violence against women, etc.  And he's too obsessed with tying up loose ends in quintuple knots.  When the main enigma is resolved, there are still 60-70 pages left and I'm thinking "what's left?"  Well, there was another plot thread he decided he'd better beat to death, so he did.

And, what's more, as with Henning Mankell's Wallander, our hero Blomkvist is so focused he only eats and drinks one thing, in his case coffee and sandwiches.  Towards the end, we don't even know what's on the sandwiches.  It's just "sandwiches."  It gets old.  Not that mystery novels need to be food-centric.  Patricia Cornwell trips over herself writing about fresh garlic and extra-virgin olive oil, as if to convince us that they're sophisticated in Richmond.  But check out the food in the novels of Qiu Xiaolong.  You could just keep the noodles and dispense with the murder.  It's good to have balance.

 

Larchmont retail

For the last couple of days I've been working at the public library here in fancy pants Larchmont, NY, whence my wife hails. I will confess that I am surprised to see that retail here appears to have become even more rarefied over the course of the crisis and its "aftermath".  On the Boston Post Road, for example, there is a spot where within the last two years two boutique chocolatiers have moved in across the street from one another.  There are now three fairly upscale cafe/bakeries on one block. The old school sports store on Palmer Avenue -- which had a lot of racquet sports stuff in it -- closed, seemingly a victim of the Dick's or whatever up at New Roc City in New Rochelle. Now there's a racquet sports store pure and simple. There is a truly world class fromagier here. 

What this says to me is that there has been no real impact of the crisis on Wall Street compensation.  But, then, we knew that.

True Love

As we have reported, Graham is going through a period of obsession with the Revolutionary War.  Which is only natural, after all.

So when his cousin Sadie, scarcely one year younger than him at five coming on six, asked him on the beach yesterday if he loved her, I suppose there's no reason we should have been surprised at his answer.  He paused and thought deeply, and then said:  "I love you when you talk about real historical data."  (or perhaps it was historical "facts," or "dates", the record is a bit murky here).

Maserati with a bumper sticker

Luxury insouciance apparently knows no bounds.  At the Princeton Shopping Center this evening, after picking up a variety of Klondike bars (Oreo! Heath Bar!  who knew?), I saw a navy blue Maserati sedan, the four door, an admittedly very handsome vehicle.  On the left side, just behind the gas cap, was a bright yellow and green round sticker that said something like "Frogbridge Rules" with picture of a frog in a baseball cap or somesuch.  A school sticker.  I inspected it and am 90% certain it was a sticker, not a magnet. This car lists for about $120k.

This is very strong fashion statement indeed:  "Here in a lengthy and nasty recession, I care so little about my status vehicle that I put my kid's school sticker on it."  I think we get the point.

Excellent trip to the pool

It was very hot here in Princeton yesterday so we all went to the Broadmead pool late in the day.  Graham, who has been very circumspect around the water, ended up being pretty active.  Over and over, he walked along the side of the pool, holding onto the edges, and then climbed out when he reached the lap-swimming divider.

Even better, Natalie was very excited to climb on my back and play bucking bronco. We did it again and again.  This after months and years of her scarcely wanting to touch me at all, except when giving me the occasional punch in the arm.  It warms dad's heart.

TV appearance

So I was sitting on David and Carol's porch in the heat yesterday, plowing through Stieg Larsen's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, when my cell phone rang.  It was a producer from Bloomberg, who wanted me to be on Bloomberg News that night to talk about management changes at AIG's Asian subsidiary AIA.  Of course.

So I borrowed a jacket and a tie from David to go with some of the office casual stuff I had brought with me.  Then I dropped Mary and Natalie off at Stacy and Sophie's and went to the Princeton Library (after buying the FT and the WSJ to read on the train and stopping in Iano's for pizza).

At 4:37 I was on a NJTransit train to Manhattan, sweating like a pig from being over dressed in a heat wave.

At Bloomberg, it was just like everyone had said. Fish tanks. Free snacks. A little pancake makeup.

The experience in the actual studio was odd.  They gave me a mike and an earpiece.  I was gonna be talking to a woman in Hong Kong.  A man's voice came on from London and we did a sound check.  They told me to look at the camera.  Problem was, there were two monitors of just my face right below the camera, and another monitor with another camera angle of me in the corner.  I couldn't see the face of the woman I was talking to.  What was worse, I was in a glass room and all these people were walking by leaving work.  Naturally I looked to see if I knew any of them.  There was a guy with what was probably a viola in a case on his back, probably going to quartet practice after work.  He walked back and forth.  The camera was by far the most boring thing in my visual space, and that's what I was supposed to look at.  Ridiculous.

Then the anchor came on and introduced me, and mangled not only my firm's name but the last names of the CEO and recently deposed chairman of AIG (who had been CEO of American Express and is a really well-known person).

It was all pretty confusing.  Considering that, I think I did OK.

Here's the video.

Home from camp

I picked up Natalie from Gwynn Valley on Tuesday.  She had an excellent time there, and has in particular gotten excited about riding horses.  Naturally, I have scheduled time with a certified financial planner to map out the ramifications of this newfound love.

No but seriously.  I now have a new picture on my desktop.  It's a little small, I need to go back to the camp website and buy a higher quality one.  But I think you get the point from looking at it. She is very happy.

When I look at the picture, I almost instinctually sit up straighter, as part of a shared posture improvement drive Mary and I have embarked upon recently.  I also try to concentrate more on my work to bring home them ducats, at least when I'm not blogging.

Final thoughts on World Cup winners and losers

I just need to say once more, the biggest loser of the World Cup was not France, not Italy, but the Fox Soccer Channel.  And our buddies at FSC did nothing to earn this maltreatment at the hands of FIFA.  The worked diligently and enthusiastically to pump up the volume leading into the tournament, and then got served up... still images.  It was sad to watch them try to wax eloquent about still photos, when ESPN and ABC and FIFA.com got to show all the highlights.

If I wasn't having a strange allergic reaction to my couch right now, I'd be in their watching Premier League reruns from 2007 just to show my undying devotion.

High seriousness

Morrissey is like the Steve Martin of rock and roll.  Not every record is great, but he is remarkably consistent, and he can veer into territory where others dare not tread.

As in below:

Always be careful when you abuse the one you love
The hour or the day no one can tell
But one day "goodbye" will be "farewell"
And you will never see the one you love again

Hmmm.  Morrissey's writing about death, again. Nobody else writes songs about death like this.

I think it's because heterosexual people in the developed world don't have the same experience of death that gay men who came of age in the 80s did. And secular straight people don't have a ritual or devotional context for dealing with or thinking about death, outside of movies.  And, perhaps, Morrissey.

And in the back, his drummer, pounding out a furious, improbable beat, as if to underscore the speed of life's passing.

The Talent Given Us

Rarest of rarities, multiple recommendations in a single day.  Rent The Talent Given Us.  It has a different pace than most.  Watch the whole thing.  Then watch the credits.  Then watch the short about the making of the film. 

I'd rather not say more.

A new contender

I am pleased to say that I have been blown away by another book, to wit, Peter Hessler's Country Driving.  The book divides into 3 sections:  the first is about driving along "the Great Wall" (actually, lots of different great walls) in China's hinterlands.  The second is about the village of Sancha, north of Beijing, where Hessler and a friend rented a small house for some years to get away from the city. The third is about a factory in a new city in a "development zone" in the South of China.

When I read the review, I remember thinking the driving around part would be interesting. It was kind of good, but -- like Rory whatever his name is's The Places In Between and Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts, the review was more spellbinding than the book itself.  The second two sections -- where Hessler settles down and gets to know a place and its inhabitants -- are brilliant.

The best way to think about it is to compare him to Michael Lewis -- and he is the rare active nonfiction writer (of my admittedly limited sample) who compares favorably to Lewis (OK.  Michael Pollan does too).. Lewis is attracted to exceptional people and situations, and is a brilliant stylist. He is, in fact, all too often blinded by his own virtuosity.

Hessler, by contrast, is a simply a keen observer with the patience to sit and watch things change over time. Yes, he writes well, but mostly he cares about what he writes about, and it comes through. The section about Sancha, where he befriends a family and in particular their young sun, reaches a rare intensity when the boy gets quite ill and the author becomes an extremely active participant in saving the kid's life. When reading Lewis's The Big Short, I stayed up late reading because the writing and the narrative were engrossing.  When reading Country Driving -- and in particular when the kid was sick -- I stayed up late reading because I needed to know that the kid was going to be OK.

All I can say is that, as soon as I post this, I'm going to Amazon to put Hessler's other books on my wish list.  I'll be sure to buy them soon.



*Speaking of Lewis, I heard him speak at Sungard's New York City day a few weeks back. Again, he's brilliant, but it was basically Charlie Rose live, only the guy he was sitting with wasn't as good as Charlie Rose.  He dialed it in, gave us the 25-minute synopsis of his book, and then walked off.

once more, My Brightest Diamond

Code of conduct

I went to the dry cleaner today to pick up some shirts. They were ridiculously expensive to freaking launder and press.  Thanks to jah that I mostly wear t-shirts these days. In any case, I take comfort from the dry cleaner's Code of Conduct, as posted on its wall, which states that it does not engage in "gender-based pricing."  Excellent.

Prediction -- Germany vs. Spain

I haven't watched any of the game yet, though I'll tune in for a little. I want to go on the record as saying that -- though I'd prefer Spain to win, I think Germany will take it today.  I think the overhang of the debt crisis will be reflected on the pitch.  Germany is strong now and calls the cards in Europe.  Spain is a supplicant.  I think this dynamic will play out on the field.

Sadly, I think much the same thing happened between Ghana and Uruguay.  Uruguay believed in itself -- in this context -- and did what it took to win, however nasty.  Ghana did not believe in itself at the penalty line.  It was a failure of will.

Doubtless many will censure me for this Nietzschean logic.

Trip to the mountains

This weekend we drove out to Asheville, and then Brevard, to take Natalie to camp.  As I had mentioned.

I had gotten Natalie all excited about not just going to camp, but also about staying in a relatively fancy hotel.  The Hilton Biltmore Park did not disappoint, though it was right next to an interstate.  Natalie was quite impressed that both the area around the sink (the vanity, or whatever) and the window ledge were made of granite, though I don't think they actually were.

The beds were quite nice though, and they were placed a fine distance apart.  So I introduced the kids to the fine art of jumping from bed to bed.  Graham was first to get into it, while Natalie maintained an ironic distance.  This could not be sustained for long.  Soon they were both diving from bed to bed in time together, innovating a wide range of knee-bouncing techniques.

We went into Asheville, and had a fine meal at the Early Girl eatery (which Marvin later told me was owned and run by our boy Butch's brother).  This place rocks. Very mellow, welcoming, and understated, the kind of place Chapel Hill desperately needs.  Out on the streets of Asheville, there was a wide range of buskers and tourists.  I could tell that Natalie thought the street performers were wierd and distasteful.  She is at that phase.

The next day we set off for Brevard and Gwynn Valley.  It was as lovely as I remembered it, and strikingly open air, much more so than I recalled.  It seems as if there are no actual windows in the whole place, including the dining hall. Only screens. Natalie was quite nervous by the time we got her to her cabin, and very ready for us to get out of there and let her meld with her peers, which, as the picture above seems to indicate, she seems to have done.  Before we left I bought a hat and a t-shirt(which I am wearing now). I also waded in the creek.

Graham, unfortunately, had a major tantrum moment after we dropped her off.  Having been up till 10 the night before, a lack of sleep had something to do with it. Leaving his sister at camp was also a factor.  Mostly he wanted to get back to the hotel, bounce on the beds, and watch Liberty's Kids.  All of which we did, in due time.

Sunday, however, was more his speed.  As planned, on the way back we stopped by the Guilford Courthouse National Battle Ground site, the turning point of the southern campaign of the Revolution, where the Brits enjoyed a pyrhhic victory but began their inexorable slide towards humiliation at Yorktown. We were pleased (if underwhelmed) to see that our stimulus money had put a fresh coat of asphalt down on the parking lot and all the roads through the woods. But that's a matter for another blog.

Graham was totally psyched to watch the videos about the war, especially the one which depicted the broad narrative course of the war up to the Guilford Courthouse battle.  The 30-minute movie about the battle, which featured a bunch of pretty talented and dedicated if sporadically superannuated reenactors, was a little too naturalist and bloody for our youngun. We should have heeded the parental guidance sign posted outside the auditorium.

All told, it was a hit.  Graham informs me that we need to get back there soon, possibly for his birthday, and that we will only visit revolutionary war museums that have similar videos.

Gwynn Valley

Taking Natalie to camp at Gwynn Valley this weekend. I'm so excited for her. An awesome place.

Revulsion

I must say that, thinking back to the last acts of the Uruguay-Ghana game, all I can feel is revulsion.  I mean, I didn't really care who won, I was fine with either one. They're both underdogs.

But then Ghana, by a miracle of miracles, actually headed the ball into the net on the last play.  It was going in.  The Uruguayan did what he had to do, he hit it with his hand, and got a red card.  But Ghana had it going in.

And then Ghana collapsed, to its great shame.  But they had really won, and lost only to a clever bit of rules arbitrage, really a heads up play by Suarez or whatever his name was, but it just wasn't fair.  And I don't think it's good for the sport.  But soccer isn't going anywhere.  You really can't hurt it.

Digital Concepts $20 camera from Sakar International of Edison New Jersey

Natalie needed a cheap camera to go to camp.  The camp recommended a disposable camera, but Mary hated to do that, so she bought a $20 camera from Sakar International of Edison, New Jersey at Rite Aid.  DO NOT REPEAT HER MISTAKE.

For some reason to make the camera work you need to install software on your computer first, and then install from there onto the camera.  The installation disk wheezed.  Just to copy some inert *.png files, it practically froze up.  After about 30 minutes it had not completed the install. I used Task Manager to force it to stop.

It seems to have messed up a script on my Windows Active Desktop.  It may have tampered with my Trend Micro Anti-Virus (I'll ask the IT support guys tomorrow).  For all I know it sprayed all kinds of viruses and spyware all over this cheap brick of a Dell my employer gives me.  Resist the siren call of the digital camera that seems to cheap to be true. It probably is.

Right now I'm going to back up all my files.

Running and Blockus

Last night was a little cooler here in the Piedmont. Graham and I went out by the lake for some running races and, if you'll believe this, he beat me every time!  Amazing.  No but seriously, he is getting faster.  We must encourage this running thing.  Low tone resolves from the bottom up. It was the case with me too, I excelled first at running, then at other physical stuff.

In other news, Natalie and I played our second game of Blockus last night.  The first time we played it resulted in a dead tie as we each got all our pieces down, which made us realize that we needed to get more players in to make the game more challenging, so we invited the unsuspecting Mary.  Natalie and I both kicked off trying to get strategic on the other, but Mary didn't know anything about the game.  In the end, Mary humiliated both of us, crushing us by multiple squares.  She claimed to know nothing, but I think in fact she had been practicing on the sly.

Toy Story 3 -- a scary part

This is a very good movie, even in 2-D. I will confess that I am a pure sap (as many of you may have figured out), so I am very reachable by a sweet little story about friends and growing older and moving on etc.

If you can believe it, it was my first time to the movies with Graham. Thankfully, it wasn't insanely loud. For many years we wouldn't take him to the pix for fear his sound sensitivity would kick in, but this was OK. 
I wouldn't have expected this movie to have a scary part (plot spoiler here), but as all the toys are staring down the maw of an incinerator and they join hands in resignation to their fate in a very 9/11 way, it was difficult to figure out how they were going to get out of it, even though you knew they had to just so the movie could go on.

Graham, however, didn't really know that at a core level, and he was terrified.  He was crying from fear. I held his hand and told him it was going to be OK, and I wanted to scoop him up and put him in my lap, but didn't, for fear he might think he would lose face in front of Natalie and Makenna (both rising 5th graders) and Josh (going into 3rd). I should have picked him up.  Man, you hate to see your kids scared like that.

Historical temperature data at weather.com

When I look up historical average temperatures at weather.com, they always seem lower than what we experience. I'm pretty sure that's because they're working with a relatively long data series, back to the forties or something.  The problem, of course, is that global warming is a very real thing, so the data skews cooler than what's going on outside.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have the historical data to work with, and it is directionally accurate. It's just that it's less helpful than it could be.

Southwest Airlines Flight 933 -- Family boarding

Caroline.was flying back to Boston today, actually Providence, so as to avoid regional jets.  Southwest is the one that flies the fat boys on such short hops.  So I take her to the airport.

After waiting around in the cattle pen that always precedes boarding SW, everybody lines up by those little posts.  Caroline being 12 and traveling alone, I figure they'll let her pre-board. You can forget about that:  "If she's 12 she's not considered flying unaccompanied, she can board with the families," says the nice lady.  OK, I think, that's not too bad.

So they let Business Select customers board.  Well, that makes some sick sense, I think,  business before families, sure.  And then they let all the "A" Group passengers board.  That's maybe 40-50 people.  So I figure I just missed something and insert Caroline into the queue around B10, where she would be supposed to be if she were an adult.

But no, now they announce "all families with children 4 or under."  NOW is the time for family boarding.  After half the plane is already on.  Got it. So Caroline gives me a little hug while the boarding bitch is trying to her along.

Thanks Southwest.  Thanks a lot. It all makes perfect sense now.

Teenage poetry slam

After a feast of pulled pork at Bullock's, Natalie and I went to Duke for the poetry slam at the end of cousin Caroline's poetry camp.  Baldwin Auditorium was not well cooled, for sure, and many a teenager took the stage to trot forth their poetic stylings.  There was much talk of flying, nestling in pillows and falling asleep, flesh hanging from limbs like baby pigs after napalm bombings (OK, only one of those), domineering mothers.  Some kids wrote about friends who died of cancer, or how much they loved their dads (that was an awesome poem).  There was much angst and hinting of sexuality, but not much sweating or thrusting. Rhyme and meter were rare, and rarely coincided with much talent. After the poems by the popular kids, there was much whooping.

Caroline's poem rocked, and I captured it on "film" for posterity.

Obama seeks more Ass to Kick

President Barack Obama, apparently not feeling that he had kicked enough ass for one week, has summoned Malian referee Koman Coulibaly to the White House after the official's questionable call of an unspecified penalty resulted in the canceling of the US's go-ahead goal against mighty Slovenia in the World Cup:  "The American people demand an explanation, and we demand accountability.  However I may sympathize with Mr. Coulibaly for being skinny and having a funny name, we cannot allow for such a travesty of justice to deny us the victory which should rightly have been ours." 
The President, on the recommendation of key advisors including David Axelrod and most likely Larry Summers, though possibly Paul Volcker or even Peter Orszag, is considering a demand that FIFA set aside funds to compensate possible victims of this heinous crime, which could include t-shirt vendors and bars who might have derived income from elimination round games had the US progressed, in the event that England defeats Slovenia and the US fails to defeat Algeria, or if England should score enough goals to progress on the goal differential in the event that both of the group's final games result in a draw.  Obama continued:  "The businesspeople of this great country of ours will not be deprived of revenue opportunities that should have been theirs, had this egregious misjudgment not occured."  Rumors abounded as well that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were in preliminary talks with Tim Geithner about possible release of TARP funds, and/or were writing some compensation for potentially harmed into the pending financial reform legislation.

Lonely Hearts

Tonight we started Lonely Hearts, a 2006 noir thing with Travolta, James Gandolfini, Salma Hayek, and some sick fuck who looks like Jim Carrey. It's a stylish thing, but nasty and formulaic at once.  Then again, when you've watched thousands of movies, they all start to run together.

Analysis makes paralysis -- in the lunch line

There is a guy at the lunch counter where I get my sandwich who is so painfully deliberate that it's, well, painful.  Every step in making a sandwich takes more time than it should.  When he cuts into the sub roll (always "whole wheat," mind you), he lacks the confidence to cut towards the ends, and then pushes them open a little by hand.  When he puts cheese and meat in the sub, he nudges each piece in individually.  When he wraps the sandwich at the end, he doesn't seem to have developed a technique for wrapping it, he seems to be doing it almost anew each time, despite the fact that he's been doing it for months.  I tend to order simpler sandwiches when he's minding the counter.

I don't mean to bust on the guy too hard.  He has a job. He comes in to work. He may have anxiety issues, he may be on meds, he may be doing as well as could ever be hoped.  He may sense my impatience and get freaked out.  I should probably strive harder for zen calm when I order from him.

I do wonder why store management puts him in a customer-facing role.  Does he do worse in back prepping chickens?

Mostly, I view him as an object lesson in confidence, or the lack thereof.  Most people, when they do things over and over, come to believe in their ability to do them. He doesn't seem to. Belief in oneself is key to any process improvement.  It's his manager who should be paying attention and encouraging him.  And, I guess, in the absence of management, maybe his customers.

Things heating up

Today I was wearing my "I love Slovenia nogometna"* T-shirt. Coming back from Harris Teeter with my lunch, I heard out of the corner of my ear:  "Slovenia's going down" (i.e. against the US later this week), and then "Lucky goal!", in reference to the Algerian keeper's fumble of the Slovenian captain's good but not great shot yesterday.



*The word for soccer in Slovene, as well as Croatian, is of course "nogomet," not "nogometna" (an adjectival derivative [nominative singular feminine]). Note also that this shirt from WorldSoccerShop.com was available for $6.99 a few months back, but has been marked up to $17.99 during the World Cup.  This argues more for inflation than deflation, or at least for cleverness.

Netflix needs to get it in gear

I find it astounding that Netflix is one of the top performing stocks of 2010. Every disc we get from Netflix has major scratches on it. Every one. It's a pain in the ass. I don't know what its licensing agreements from studios look like, but given that we're talking about eminently reproducible digital content, I can't imagine there would be any constraints on Netflix burning new discs and retiring old ones whenever it wanted to. The cost of the disc itself can't be high, and the process for burning it shouldn't be labor or capital intensive.

Netflix is running serious brand risk. I mean, think about it, we pay them $20 a month or some such, we probably get around to watching 2 or 3 videos on average a month. And for this we're getting a good catalog, good fulfillment, but a really shitty end user experience. They need to get on this or they will be the toast quickly.

Why no world cup footage on Fox Soccer Channel?

I must say this: for all the enthusiasm and focus that the Fox Soccer Channel has brought to the buildup to the World Cup, the fact that ABC or ESPN or FIFA or whoever has not let them license / show highlights from the game is out and out pathetic. For shame. The stateside audience for soccer would be dramatically lower without FSC.

"I scored a goal in the World Cup final"

OK. Not me, exactly. Because I don't get ESPN3 and can't watch games live, I went to good old ESPN to check the scores, and saw its video feature on guys who did score goals in the final (no coverage of the women's final, yet...). Pretty amazing. A guy from Uruguay who beat Brazil in 1950. The guy who scored 3 to beat Germany at Wembley in 1966.

Though Mary would mock me if she bothered to read my blog, this is heady, emotional stuff. Many of us get married and have kids, and unless you're first to die, everyone loses loved ones over the course of a life. Those are huge moments. But even Michael Jordan hitting the shot in '82 to give Dean Smith his first title doesn't compare. The World Cup is on an entirely other level. Go to ESPN and watch some of these clips. It's pretty cool.

Then try and return to your day job.

Breakfast with a cop

I had breakfast with a cop today. He had arrested me 18 years ago, and I bought him breakfast to thank him for doing the right thing and not cutting me any slack just because we had gone to high school together.

He asked me what I thought of the economy. I gave him a long-winded answer about how we're at a tricky point in needing to encourage debt and consumption in the near term when we really need to cut it in the long term, how we don't need big SUVs and McMansions blah blah blah.

I asked him what he thought. He said he sees the marginal portions of society and it's been very alarming how they've been underserved in the last decade or so. How the closing of the mental health center in town in 2003 had left a lot of people stranded and in need of services, how private sector contractors had ridden in on a white horse and said they could take care of the "segment" and turn a profit, and then had pulled out and run for the hills when they couldn't. He said that the disparities in wealth he saw were deeply troubling and that the passage of the health care bill was clearly a step in the right direction. He worries about seething anger amongst the poor.

This is a long-time cop, a guy who sends one of his kids to Catholic school. A guy who pulled bodies from the wreckage of 9/11. Not someone you think of as classic bleeding-heart liberal, though we are, admittedly, in a liberal town (but an affluent one and one where the underclass is relatively small -- which lends more credence to his POV).

It was another one of those moments where I thought about what I was doing with my life.

Musical interlude

Financial Reform: Faces of the Affected

The Wall Street Journal ran a story that nearly had me in tears. It charted the wide implications of the financial reform legislation currently pending in Washington, including pictures of the sad lot shown below. They come from all walks of life: derivatives trader, auto dealer, attorney general, retailer. What they share is a deep foreboding of dislocation should the current legislation pass. It will rip through their lives like Katrina and Rita, or Thelma and Louise.

I'm sure that, gazing on their anxious countenances, you are seized with empathy and compassion and you think, how can I help? What can I do to make their lives a little easier, to protect them from the impending storm? What you can do is take up a quill pen, like the ones our Founding Fathers used when moved by the spirit of sweet little baby Jesus, and write to your congressman or senator. Man the proverbial levies of freedom! Line them with the sandbags of liberty! Let them know how you feel about the impending threats to the ways of life that these good white men have known and loved for generations. Don't let a tragedy that we can prevent come to pass without a fight.

Obama's Katrina?

A lot of people are asking whether the Gulf crisis is Obama's Katrina?  There are a lot of heady themes wrapped up in this simple question, and I think it's best to address them head on.

• Was Katrina Bush's Katrina?  The idea is that the moral emptiness of Bush's regime was laid bare by the images of the forgotten underclass languishing at the Superdome and Bush and Chertoff's failure to respond. In fact, we were all complicit in the first bit, and Bush's failure to respond probably didn't cost him many votes in 2008.  It may have galvanized Democratic voter registration drives, though.
  
• If Obama fucks up, is the Democratic Party fucked forever?  Of course not. A lot of people were panicky around Scott Brown, the Tea Party, and now BP.  The fact is that, as Obama has noted, the regulatory apparatus and culture around oil drilling, suburbia, and energy consumption have been bipartisan and cultural for many decades.  That said, three decades of Republican domination and wild west mentality have played a big role.  It is shameful that auto sales in recent months have been driven by SUV and truck sales (though lots of these have been fleet purchases for contractors).  People have short memories.
  
  To come back to my point, lets assume the Republicans regain seats in the mid-terms and Obama loses in 2008.  That does not mean we'll never have another black president or another progressive one.  In my view, the senate supermajority has caused the Democrats to be suboptimal listeners and reactive opportunists, and this is coming back to bite us.
  
  Deepwater Horizon is not Obama's fault, and he can't fix it, any more than he can fix unemployment.  Things take time. People are freaked out about hyperinflation when deflation is the bigger threat, but Fox News and the Tea Party have gotten the upper hand in terms of defining the debate.  I think Obama should bring Volcker to the podium to talk about more than just proprietary trading. People respect him and will listen to him.  There may be a fear that he will overshadow Bernanke.

Anyhow, my gut is that however bad Obama fucks up, he will eventually be viewed as a positive figure, because he has a good heart and his vision of America is one that is credible and in line with what most people, if not white people petrified by change. And because he's young and has a great career ahead of him.

OK, this is rambling, but hell, it's a blog.

Theme to Liberty's Kids

Graham, in the full throes of his revolutionary war obsession, has gotten really into the "Liberty's Kids" series, which we've gotten on DVDs from the library. He particularly loves the theme song.  When it's on, he sits there and half hums along, mouthing those few words he's really gotten a command of.

I remember this stage of childhood, when you know that you've memorized a song but can't really sing it. It's awesome.

I've gotten so I like singing the song too.  Natalie hates it.  She tells me to shut up.  I think she's jealous that Graham has a favorite song.  For me, it's just the same as that Owl City "Fireflies" song she's into. It's a sweet little pop song that's positive in tone, so it's great for kids and even better for adults.  Soon enough they may well be listening to something with a hard edge to demonstrate that they are bad-assed ironic teens and are separating from their parents.

Back from Vegas

What a shithole.  At around 6:30 last night I was consumed by a need to get out of the massive Mandalay Bay Hotel and habitron.  So I went outside. First off, it was very difficult to get to the street.  Once I was there I walked aways and observed the sites.  The Luxor.  The Excalibur.  New York New York (OK. I give em props for the rollercoaster).  Basically it was like being inside the hotel complex, except it wasn't air conditioned.

I was pleased to see that I could've eaten all day for $29.95 at the buffet at Excalibur, but I didn't.

On hotel TV there was a long infomercial for the City Center complex, set on "67 acres of invaluable land".  If it's so invaluable, why was there a convenience store and a McDonalds across from my hotel, and a fleebag motel that had been converted into studio apartments, and even a derelict parking lot.  Something was amiss.  And why did City Center's financing almost collapse?

Then we went and had sushi at a restaurant with some name chef and it wasn't very good, but I didn't have to pay for it (as in Repo Man:  "Hey dude, lets go do some crimes!" "Yeah, lets go eat sushi and not pay.)

There were things I liked.  I liked lying on my bed and watching planes take off at the airport across the way, with the mountains in the distance as a backdrop.  I liked Shark Reef in the Mandalay Bay complex. Walking through one of the water tunnels, I saw a sword fish swim over my head.  That was cool.

Basically I like the kids' stuff.

And then I get home, and Graham starts puking.

Vegas

Haven't been here since '76. Somewhat overwhelming.  The Back Street Boys are playing here at the Mandalay Bay, where people smoke indoors (what a throwback) and all the waitresses seem to have tattoos in the smalls of their backs and other enhancements. Is it the world's largest mall? Exhausted. More tomorrow.

Waitress

This is a sweet little idyll of a movie, enhanced by the ogre like husband character, cubed in its poignance by the nasty murder of the writer / director / supporting actress Adrian Shelly between wrap and release.  Andy Griffith is as good as ever.

Inspiration

We are now actually paying an architect to help us gear up for our renovation.  Hard-pressed to say what we wanted, from somewhere in the dregs of my bowels I pulled out "Scandinavian country house."  Little did I know there was actually a defined style.  Quoth one book's website:
"Of all the European country home styles, none is more universally popular than Scandinavian Country. These fresh, light-filled northern interiors have an effortless grace that never fails to delight the eye."

So we're off to the races.  Here's one I like.

Obviously we're not getting all the way there, but we could pull out some elements.

Graham gets his white belt

After months of stonewalling, I finally got Graham to recite his student's creed to his dojo at tae kwon do.  I only was able to do it by half-threatening to not take him anymore if he didn't do it.  Graham practiced once for me, and in his soft little voice he said:

I believe in myself.
I am confident.
I can accomplish my goals.

I believe in what I study.
I am disciplined.
I am ready to learn and advance.

I believe in my teachers.
I show respect to all who help me progress.

So when we got to class, I told the dojo that Graham was ready to say it, and at the beginning of class he called Graham over to him in a corner (I was glad he didn't have to do it in front of all the other kids).  But then, before class began, he called Graham over to him in front of all the other kids, told them Graham had said it and was going to receive his white belt.  Graham was visibly very happy. Then he told all the kids about how he had gotten his own white belt not so long ago (he's about 24 or so), but had stuck to it and become a black belt.  Then he pulled the white belt from within his robe and tied it snuggly around Graham's waist, and all the kids gave Graham a big round of applause.

I was very proud.

Good fun

This is the kind of band I would like to be in.

Into the Wild

This is a serious movie, beautiful but cruel and shocking, in its way. It will make you think about how you treat your children.

Dizzy from numbers

Tonight I'm hard at work on a piece of research on life insurance in India. Dizzying.  3 million agents, 45 million policies a year, somewhat different numbering system:  "755 lakh crore Rs" = 755 * 100,000 * 10,000,000, and then divide by 45 to make it dollars.

And then to top it all off the statistics come from different places and they don't all make sense together, so you've got to figure out how they all fit. It's enough to drive you bonkers.

China subsidy for rat-proof refridgerators

This article, at Bloomberg, is an instance of a thoughtful use of stimulus/subsidies. It details how the Chinese government has been subsidizing farmers' purchases of appliances that don't get gnawed on by the rats that cohabitate with them. In view of an article in the New Yorker I recently read on the quest for the perfect stove for use in developing countries (a quixotic quest if ever there was one, since people don't take care of them or use them as directed), it will be interesting to revisit this 3 to 5 years down the road to see what the long term impact has been. Hopefully it delivers sustainable benefits.

Stomach bug

Have scarcely left the hosue this weekend.  Mary and Graham have both had stomach bugs. I have at least been psychosomatically afllicted with the same. Have been reduced to carting Natalie around so that she, at least, could have some fun for all of us.

I did get her to the library and, while there, checked out the complete set of Liberty's Kids DVDs, just right to help your Revolutionary War obsessed 6-year old while away the days.  And with Walter Cronkite as the voice of Ben Franklin.  Who knew?

Bird and fire

On my way to get my coffee from Weaver Street at 3:30, I spied a small baby bird by the back steps of The Station, Mike Benson's establishment.  It had its mouth wide open and was peeping vigorously.  What's up with that?  I thought.  Meanwhile, up on the deck rail of the station, another larger bird was looking at me and squawking pretty aggressively, so I took that to be the mama bird, and was somewhat comforted.

When we adopted our cats Leon and Rascal, the hippie chicks at the cat shelter argued that we should keep them inside because cats eat a lot of baby birds who are left nesting on the ground while their moms go out prospecting for worms and whatnot.  Mary buys this entirely, plus she fears the cats could get snagged by hawks or by nasty snakes.  I have been somewhat dubious on this argument, feeling that felines want to be free.  This baby bird, however, argued in the other direction.

On the way back I saw that the bird was still there, but the mama wasn't peeping at me anymore.  Strange, I thought.  Then when I came around the corner of the Station, I saw that a bunch of mulch was on fire, and appeared to be moving towards the building.  There was a bird laying near the fire that could have been mom.  I went and got a waiter from inside and he doused the fire with water and I stamped on it with my flip flops, until a guy with better shoes for the job came out and dealt with it more authoritatively.  The bird didn't look good, though.

I think I'm a little sensitive today, perhaps. It was kind of a freaky scene, something David Lynchy about it.

A hairy day out there

I made the mistake of looking at the markets around 2:30 today, and all of a sudden it was 2008 again. But now, to bed, for I must speak with reporters from Bloomberg and Reuters about AIG's 1Q results at around 8 and, by gum, I'll need to have something clever to say to them.

Thunder rumbles.

Obesity trends

This is a scary picture. Hadn't seen this one. Thanks to RGA Reinsurance for sticking it in their newsletter. Keep at it Jamie Oliver and Michele Obama.

Independence from foreign oil

This oil in the Gulf situation continues to anger me, and the suggestions from various politicians and others on the right that we need to keep drilling to reduce our dependence on foreign oil rankles in particular. To me it's very clear. To reduce our dependence on foreign oil we should:

• Drive much smaller cars and many fewer fucking SUVs
• Drive them less
• Live closer together

It's not that complicated.